August Update Post 2023
Hobbies are like... okay yeah we wont continue that, point is we all have them!
I have changed the naming slightly so that rather than the name being reflective of the month just gone, its for the month ahead. Also I am late lol
Apologies for the recent downtime, I had an issue (now resolved) with another service I run two days in a row... and during an upgrade didnt realise the forum got turned off too. This should not happen again for some time
Development and Features
Something that needs to be done is the implementation of some features, they have been requested for some time and have also I would say are important to the site. In order to do this I will need to set up a development server for the site (technically you can run stuff locally but ive had all kinds of issues annoyingly.) I will be doing that in the near future, however real life plans in the next couple months up till the sites 1 year anniversary mean that I may be far slower than i'd like to be in that regard.
Planned features
I have added these to the wipboard page, however for simplicities sake I will list them here and a brief description of how I would like to implement them.
Seasonal Themes
This one isnt really the end of the world if I dont get working, but I think it'd be cute. For christmas in 2022, I changed the sites logo to one with a little santa hat, I'd like to be able to do that and maybe change the site colours. I would ultimately like to have a theme picker, so if set to automatic it'd be whatever your machine/browser is set to (light/dark) but also if there are any seasons the site can match including logo.
Profile Comments
This is the most important one IMO, I have spent a lot of time looking into chat implementations and think that will be quite a large project and maybe not even directly worth doing (tho i'd like to) ,what I think is absolutely necessary though is for users to be able to post on a profile, that way it can be off topic and have miscillaneous questions in there as well.
Custom Emotes
Those who have used the fediverse would be familiar with this feature and how I would like to have it implemented, I would much prefer this over a sticker system as it would not be used on their own much. Whereas I think stickers tempt users to just post with a sticker rather than write. I had considered post reactions, but if i were to ever implement that I would want to do so with custom reactions, not just emoji ones.
Active Users(BACKEND)
For stats it would be handy to get a rough idea of how many users log in to the site at X period of time. Its not super essential but i'd be interested to see the return rate of users and amount of lurkers. For this site i'm quite interested in user stats
Rejig of tags
I have added and changed a couple tags about on the site, mostly in the Introduction main tag. This is for user clarity and also to allow them to be filtered where desired. I may do similar to other tags soon.
They are fairly self explanatory which is nice
SiteInfo is for things that users should read when they sign up or are interested in doing so, I think I will make an FAQ and general site usage guide for it too, just so information is easily accessible. This will however be after some issues are addressed, ie Tag View
Updates are for site update posts like these.
New Account for Official Things
I have made a @SheepishPatio account for explicitly informational things about the site. I think that will give an easy way for people to click on those posts as well 'oh its the sheep image, i should look at that'. Although I do also like how personal it feels when its 'me' posting on this account. So for blogposts that arent legalese I will stick to Lumeinshin. That also means if in future there are any other moderators they can post on their accounts. Accountability and all that.
Twitter
I have made a Twitter account for all admin type posts as well. @SheepishPatio on there as well. This is helpful for when the site goes down for an extended period and also for that pesky brand stuff I guess too. There are a few other niceties to having other accounts that we will hopefully see the benefit of soon too.
Fediverse
I also have an account on my fediverse instance too, which you can find as SheepishPatio@pleroma.skyshanty.xyz. The content on it will be similar to the Twitter account.
Ads (again... yay)
This part may be of interest to some, maybe not for others, feel free to skip this part if desired.
On Site
For a brief window I turned back on Google Adsense, I had ads running every 20 posts and on the footer and sides. This was only visible if you werent logged in. I was a bit worried it'd be a bit too much, however I was on a different web profile and went onto a few "more reputable" sites with ads on and was shown the true horrors of the current internet. I think if I had faith in the ads not being for rubbish and with less tracking I would be okay with that amount of ads i had set, even for logged in users.
I think though for the ads from google to be worth being on the page, i'd want to earn more than say 30 pence in 2 weeks lol. I could have got more by making it so all the tracking is on and the ads are 'tailored', however I would need to have a cookie consent popup, which i'd like to avoid ideally.
Let me know what you think about Google Adsense or any other Ad Networks. I have said before that I'd be happy if I earnt enough via ads to offset an external ad campaign or two but I dont want to compromise the site itself. So I think i'd rather have explicit partners if anything.
Advertising the Forum
One thing I have to think a lot about is those pesky analytics. Its not really something i'd consider myself good at, but running the site means that I have to. So if you are interested in the future of the site, this is where my focus has been.
For the most part, I have ran all the ads I can think of so I have for the most part exhausted what I would consider the 'traditional' advertising methods for the site. I shall continue to do so. The more interesting thing is word of mouth and more organic growth, however that is hard to measure
Ad History
I have ran a variety of ads online to advertise the forum, here is the history of the ads I have ran:
Current ads
4chan and Google are the places where I consistently run ads. Google ads bring about 1k clicks a month. Most of these are via miscellanious sites, so annoyingly doesnt really give much info to me on where clicks are coming from or anything (which is like half the point of having them) I am happy with the money spent and clicks on them, although they were supposed to be on search but dont seem to be at all, I may have to reach out to ask whats going on there.
The 4chan system (technically not related to 4chan exclusively but they have no other partner sites.) their system is quite good as it allows me to finetune the boards, countries and device types fobr the ads. This is nice because I can make custom ad banners and tailor them to certain boards. For the majority of users on the site this is how you've joined. I think that I managed to get some good users lol.
Past Ads
In the past I have used Reddit and SomethingAwful forums for advertising as well. SomethingAwful does it so that you pay a fee and the banner is added to their sites rotation and you can pay more to multiply its frequency.
External logins
currently new or prospective users have the ability to log into the forum via Discord or Google. Unless you want to have a unified online identity I would not recommend it. It is important if you have unique usernames on sites to not link external services to sites. The site does not have a bad reputation online (or any really since we're still small), so chances of it backfiring are low at the moment, but using a unique email for each username is best.
Thanks
I think this is about all for this month,
I have been reading the threads and there have been some really interesting posts lately which has been great. Thank you for using and taking interest in the site. I hope we are around for a long time to come and the site serves you all well.
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ToS Page, Includes links to the archive
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